Small-Scale Time Line
This is a timeline of events in Count to the Eschaton, as printed in The Judge of Ages. Small-scale Time Line Dates whose events are portrayed in the text are in bold font. Note: To calculate by the Chimerical Military calendar, merely subtract 1737 from AD to derive AUCR. -2535 — Preposthuman Era (Count to a Trillion) 1901-2000 — The Genocide Century * 1901-1930 — Great War, effective end of monarchy in Europe. Invention of the aeroplane, mass production of the automobile. * 1931-1970 — Economic Theory Wars. Socialists lose open conflict in 1940's, make immense gains through indirect means. British Empire lost. United States of America rises to world Predominance. Sexual pathologies erupt in the West, become commonplace. Period of rapid intellectual decline: poetry ceases. * 1969 — First Man on the Moon. * 1971-2000 — The Crazy Years. Collapse of the Socialist Empire in the East. The Holiday from History. First world Infosphere. 2001-2100 — Century of Faith Wars * 2001-2020 — Little Jihad. Jerusalem, Tehran nuked. Economic collapse and civil war in China. * 2021-2050 — Indian Summer of Liberty also called Age of the Sovereign Individual. International Banking system subverts and overthrows remnants of the Old World Order and establishes a semi-libertarian Plutocracy. * 2054 — Launch of the NTL Croesus. * 2051-2070 — International credit system collapses. Hyperinflation, world depression. End of the Infosphere. Rule by the Local Military Governors, Advocates, or Euro-American Proconsuls established throughout Asia and Africa. * 2071-2090 — Greater Jihad. * 2090 — Burning of New York the Beautiful by Jihadi atomics. Historians count this as the beginning of the Little Dark Ages. 2090-2200 — Little Dark Ages In the confusion and mutual recriminations of the disaster of New York, the factions of the American political system resort to open violence, destroying the last democracy on the planet. Rapid disintegration of the international economic open order follows, followed by a sudden drop in technological application (albeit not scientific knowledge). Certain popular doctrines, rife with foolish economic errors, and ancient religious prohibitions on usury, were enforced with particular fury both in the Islamic and the Christian World, and meanwhile the Chinese and Japanese economic spheres fell prey to a strange philosophy that combined the worst elements of Marxism, Buddhism and Confucianism (Xun Ziism, the Way of the Wise). Only in the severed and warring states of India did anything approaching sane economic practice prevail, and it was among their splintered princedoms that the civilization to dominate the next two centuries rises. The Jihad was a more or less continuous effort during these years, an ongoing attempt to make the West and Far East more favorable to sharia law, or to grant special privileges to Muslims. The British Parliament was dissolved during the confusion and riots following the Abecedarian Wars (2139 until at least 2182, the Treaty of Charleston; historians disagree as to an end date). The Plague was an Abecedarian attack, meant to wipe out the Jews: 2165 is when the virus was released, 2216 was the last known untreatable case of the spore. * 2091 — Jefferson Dayles refuses to step down when impeached, instead attempts a coup. Succession Wars in the USA. * 2092 — Joint Chiefs of Staff assume administration "for the duration." Beginning of the Imperial Federal Government. * 2111-2150 — Rise of India. Genetic manipulation of castes in India. * 2112 — Croesus ''arrives at V 886 Centauri and begins mining. FIRST CONTACT. * 2120-2220 — The Starvation Years. Famine reaches worldwide levels in A.D. 2120. * 2121 — Disunion War. American Imperium breaks into People's Ergonomic Positive Republic of California, the Gaianist Democratic Union of America, and the Confederate States of America (Informally known as Oddifornia, Greenyland, and Jesusland). * 2139 — Abecedarian War begins (so-called because it is Atomic, Biological, Chemical). * 2150-2170 — The Harmonious Forward Leap Together. Japan makes territorial gains along the cost of North and South America, establishing enclaves, erecting schools and factories. ::Re-industrialization spreads from the Orient. Supremacy of Japan under the Tenno. Cyber-Shintoism. Japanese establish the Co-Prosperity Sphere in the Pacific, from Australia to the Aleutians, and parts of California. Pacific Rim Wars. Artificial Volcanism first used as military terror-weapon * 2151 — The Big One. The long-expected San Andreas earthquake destroys the coastal cities of California. The coastline is shattered into an Archipelago. Japanese commercial interests and military units are invited in by Sacramento to restore prosperity and order. Oddifornia becomes a client state of the Tenno. * 2155 — The Southwest frees itself from California, declares itself Aztlan, a province of Reino del Extasis, the federated drug-theocracy stretching from Mexico to Brazil. * 2162 — Presumed date of first broadcast from the Croesus, lost in transmission * 2165-2216 — Plague Years begin (also called The Fifty Years). Extinction of the Great Apes. * 2165 — Persian nomads release the Final Solution Bacillus. * 2166 — Presumed date of second broadcast from the Croesus, lost in transmission. * 2170 — First reception of broadcasts by Croesus. First pictures of the Monument studied on Earth. Monument notation revolutionizes logic, semantics, mathematics, and gives rise to the a suite of analytical techniques called Semiotic Quantification. * 2171-2190 — Semiotic analysis of the human genome prompts the First Revolution in Biotechnology. Rapid advances in bioengineering. * 2176-2180 — Reconquista. Southwestern United States overrun by Mexico. * 2176 — The Armed Republic of Greater Texas breaks away from the Confederacy. * 2180 — Semiotic analysis of semantic neuropsychology prompts creates the Linguistic Consequentialism theory, or "Volksseele" first in Dutch Africa, later in Europe, first as an academic theory, later as a political movement. As a result, nation-states, blamed for the horrors of the depopulation and war, begin to lose predominance to Lingospheres. * 2181 — The Kali Yuga. India reduces Middle East and Indochina to radioactive wasteland, bombs European cities. Effective end of the Jihad. Copts rise to power in Egypt. * 2182 — Treaty of Charleston ends the Abecedarian War. * 2187 -2190 — Linguistic Laws, first in France and Germany, and later throughout the civilized nations, require subjects to declare their primary language, and to avow loyalty to it, rather than to nation-states. * 2191-2196 — Iberian War. Indosphere retreats from African and Far Eastern possessions. * 2199 — Last of the Great Apes perishes in captivity. Ximen del Azarchel born. 2201-2300 — The Purifications * 2205-2207 — Clean Mediterranean War. Noted for the lack of atomic or biological weapons. Coptic Order gains control from Tripoli to Armenia, called Greater Egypt. * 2209 — Napoleon Montrose born. * 2210 — Menelaus Montrose born. His father dies that same year. * 2210-2230 — Spain re-establishes intercontinental electronic systems with South America, issues letters of Marquee and Reprisal, begins to clear the high seas of piracy. Whites repopulate the Mississippi Valley and Western territories. * 2211-2216 — Japanese Winter. Early Japanese-led attempts in planetary weather control via orbital parasol system ends in climate disaster. * 2211 — Leonidas Born. * 2216 — Last known untreatable case of the spore. End of the Plague. * 2216-2222 — Menelaus ages 6 to 12 in Bridge-to-Nowhere. * 2220 — End of the Starvation. * '''2221' — At age 11, Menelaus vows enmity to Darwin, imaging him to be a cartoon villain. * 2217 — Menelaus is prenticed to an Artificer at age 7 (this means he would have risen to journeyman at age 14 in 2224, to released at 21 in AD 2231, assuming the master kept honest debt records). * 2224-2230 — Counterreconquest. Texas annexes Aztlan. * 2225-2226 — At age 15-16, Menelaus sees service in the Counterreconquest. Sam Feckle dies on campaign against Utah. * 2230 — India lands an expedition on the Moon, explores and restores the long-dead Tycho Base. With the resumption of manned space travel, this year is accounted the end of the Little Dark Ages. * 2231-2250 — Spain and India cooperate on space program, including an interstellar expedition. * 2232 — At age 22, Menelaus is already an attorney and duelist (who has fought four men, killing two), leg damaged in a duel. Mike Nails is his third kill. He is frozen for 15 months. Calendar age and biological age no longer synchronized. * 2234 — Menelaus attends Soko University in San Francisco, at that time, one of the Japanese enclaves of California, owned by the Sumitomo Zaibatsu. * 2235 — Launch of the NTL Hermetic. At age 25calendar/24bio, Menelaus boards the punt for NTL Hermetic. An experiment with a mind-augmenting neuro-pharmaceutical renders him unfit for voyaging. He is biosuspended. * 2244-2324 — Reign of Queen Gloriana of the United Kingdom. * 2250-2300 — Rise of Azania. Ultradeep robotic mining techniques lowers cost of extracting South African uranium, diamonds, oil. (Techniques later used to bore the Depthtrain system). Discovery of the motherlode of Uranium in Pretoria. * 2265 — Pacific War. Called 'the Pacifist War' because peace protestors swung the victory to the Japanese in their territorial disputes with Texas for control of the West Coast. * 2260-2270 — Greater Texas absorbs the scattered valleys of California and Baja, joins the Confederacy to form the Reunited States of America. * 2270 — Linguistic Laws, first in France and Germany, and later throughout the civilized nations, require subjects to declare their primary language, and to avow loyalty to it, rather than to nation-states. * 2285 — NTL Hermetic arrives at the Diamond Star V886 Centauri. * 2287 — Leonidas (76cal/76 bio) enters biosuspension, hoping to live until Montrose returns. * 2290 — Hermetic crew erects radio-laser of sufficient power to narrowcast to Earth. * 2297-2299 — The Irish Catholic Movement, the so-called Gaelosphere. Denmark is made a possession of the British Crown during the Second War of Jenkins' Ear 2299 (so dubbed by Journalists for the artificiality of the causus belli against Spain). * 2300 — End of the Indosphere dominion. Spain, supported by South American technocracy, emerges as a dominant power in Europe. Hispanosphere Collective. 2301-2400 — Concordat Century * 2300 — Rania born. * 2303 — Sinosphere-Anglosphere conflicts in the Pacific spread from Australia to California. The Germanosphere (that is, the Boers of Azania) enters the conflict in 2333. * 2306 — Rania is 6 when Mutiny breaks out. Eight of her nine fathers are killed. * 2310 — Hermetic, under de facto command of Ximen del Azarchel the mutineer, departs from V886 Centauri. Rania is 10 bio, and is the de jure Captain. * 2323. — Thucydides Acumen Montrose, later Father Montrose and Pope Sextus VI born to Patton and Athenodora Montrose. * 2332 — Hispanosphere erects the Beanstalk. (Torre Real de Estrellas) * 2333-2338 — Yellow War. Japanese outposts in California treated with sickening brutality by Boers. The Reunited States suffer a constitutional crisis. * 2339. — Japanese home islands invaded. Members of the Imperial Family placed in biosuspension. * 2340 — First narrowcasts arrive from Hermetic: revolution in mathematics has implications in biotechnology, cybernetics. Universal Logical Syntax 'the Notational Logic' developed, Unified Field Theory, Uniform-to-Manifold Genesis Theory, Automata Cell Theory. German superiority in mathematics allows this language group to exploit the new knowledge more extensively than others. * 2340-2360 — Rise of the Germanosphere, lead by the Boers (Azania) of South Africa to world dominion. They enforce medical purity laws in order to combat diseases left over from previous wars, particularly venereal diseases. They ally with the Xi Mandarins in Manchuria, and the Coptic Christians of Greater Egypt and form the Purity Order. ::During this period, the Reunited Confederate States of America lose power and prestige: Kansas, a haven of Azanian technology, breaks away. America is balkanized. * 2341 — Japan becomes a client state of the Purity Order. * 2343 — George Edge of Hong Kong writes an influential series of essays on the relaxation of moral discipline due to virtuality addiction. The philosophy is called Condemnationalism. * 2344. — Japanese nationalists thaw the Imperial Family survivors from bio-suspension. Emperor Mikohito officially embraces Condemnationalism (abstinence from neural implantation) as proper to the Japanese national spirit. Cyber Shinto becomes the first religion to define neural-implantation as ritually impure. Certain Christian denominations also condemn the practice, but on moral grounds. Condemnationalism becomes the official doctrine of the Copts, later of the whole Purity Order. * 2350 — Mandatory Health Assurance system in South Africa makes genetic “designer babies” mandatory. Azanians rendered immune to all known natural diseases. * 2359 — Signals from the incoming Hermetic persuade the Purity Order to shoulder the vast expense of launching a spaceborne braking laser, in order to slow and intercept the wealth-laden Hermetic. (Leonidas, as per his instructions, is thawed from hibernation, 148 cal/76 bio) * 2360 — Hermetic arrives in Solar System, is attacked, defends herself, destroys the navigation satellites of the Purity Order. Rania persuades the Pure Order to surrender. (She is cal 60, bio 19 — the speed of the return voyage was higher, due to abundant antimatter fuel, and hence there was more severe Lorenz Fitzgerald contraction. Only nine years shiptime passed.) * 2360- 2369 — A political-economic worldwide or 'Tellurian' Concordat, devised by Rania using Cliometry, is established, with the Hermetic Order as its informal head. Rania is placed in suspension soon thereafter, allegedly due to maladaptation to earth conditions. The Hermetic is retired from active service, but kept aloft allegedly as a floating museum, actually to tend the contraterrene satellites. * 2361 — Leonidas (150 cal/78 bio) meets Rania (61 cal/20 bio), and is present when she thaws and examines Menelaus, who is incurable and returned after a month to biosuspension. Rania is commanded to return into biosuspension by the Hermeticists. Leonidas, heartbroken, dies. Fr. Thucydides Montrose, S.J. (38 cal/38 bio) administers the Extreme Unction. True to the last wish of Leonidas, Thucydides also enters biosuspension. * 2370 — First successful experiments in modest intelligence augmentation in prenatal subjects genetically designed to receive it. Psychics or Scholars created. * 2385 — Fears of predicted warfare disturb the counsels of the Del Azarchel (which will eventually compel to the Hermeticists revive Rania in 2390, see below). * 2390 — Rania revived amid general celebration for the 25th year anniversary of the Tellurian Concordat. 90 cal / 20 Bio. That same year, Honoré VI, with the advice and consent of the Concordat, abdicates in favor of Rania. She is crowned Sovereign of Monaco. (Thucydides thawed 67 cal/38 bio.) * 2392 — The Hermeticists, fearing Rania, force her back into hibernation (92 cal/22 bio). * 2399 — After much procrastination, Menelaus is revived. (189cal/25bio). Rania (99 cal / 22 bio) is thawed and effects a partial cure. Menelaus, as Hyde, deciphers the Iota through Kappa segments of the Monument, so the claim of the Hyades Domination over Earth is revealed. The Xypotech Emulation of Del Azarchel achieves posthuman intelligence levels between 300-350. * 2400 — Montrose meets Rania at a New Year's Eve party. She is 100cal/23 bio. * 2401 — Montrose marries Rania at San Francisco de Quito. Second Revolution in Biotechnology due to Hermetic technology and techniques being made public. War breaks out, causes a crash of the Data Environment, and Menelaus is cut off from Rania when her ship launches. She departs, uprooting the Celestial Tower of Quito. Menelaus, 191 cal / 27 bio, enters cold sleep. Rania is 101 cal / 23 bio. (Thucydides hibernates 69 cal/40 bio) 2401-2410 — Interregnum * 2400-2480 — General breakdown of law and order. Loss of the monetary system. Depthtrain system becomes unreliable. * 2401 — Exarchel orders the wounded bodies of Menelaus and Del Azarchel hospitalized and placed in biosuspension. The coffin of Menelaus is spirited away by Ozymandias Montrose, a Psychoi (scholar) loyal to Rania. *2402 — The sudden departure the world contraterrene supply, expropriated by Rania, collapses the monetary system, cripples the energy industry, and triggers global Depression. ::The Chinese directorate moves to freeze the assets, impose rationing and freeze wages and prices throughout the Chinese sphere of influence. The Australian market, taking the opposite tack, permits speculators to make fortunes during the turmoil: this sudden wealth is used to buy up land in the real world and server space in the data environment. The Concordat, which theoretically has final say over economic policy touching trade and immigration between member nations, is discredited and its jurisdiction ignored. The entanglement of economic interests in a world where Peking is a 45 depthtrain minute commute from Sydney, and no trade barriers whatever had been the rule since 2360, can no longer be peacefully separated along national boundaries. The Australians and Chinese attempt to rediscover and re-impose national sovereignty, each pursuing a course incompatible with the other, and each in an angry panic brought on by shantytown riots. By no coincidence, the armed forces of both principalities are swollen with unemployed young men. *2402-2404 — The Indochinese War breaks out between China and Australia, and spreads to India, Madagascar, and Mesopotamia. Exarchel ruthlessly atom-bombs Peking and Canberra and quells the open war after two years: acts of terror and assassination continue. ::Populations flee into cryonic hibernation in record numbers. *2404, 2405, 2416, 2440, 2453 — Montrose thawed and his biological age climbs from 27 to 41. *2404 — The Encryption. New Information Protocols erected in the world data-sphere: machine languages become incomprehensible and untranslatable into any human mathematical system. Montrose briefly thawed (193cal/28bio.) ::Tradition identifies this date as the beginning of the period of the Judgment. All ages of mankind are hereafter held to be subject to the condemnation of the Judge of Ages. *2405-2409 — The Humanist War (later called the First Global Civil War) begin as police actions in Pacifica, ostensibly to overthrow the reign of Exarchel and restore Del Azarchel. Sino-Australian Axis galvanized by the Salon of Simplicity, run by Tsian Belascu, an influential nature-worshipper, joins the Pacific states in rebellion. Chinese-backed power prevails, but the Exarchel Xypotech is deleted from all known mainframes. Del Azarchel returns to power as Nobilissimus (Supreme Executive of the Special Advocacy). ::Menelaus thawed and ages from 195cal/27bio to 199cal/31bio. *2409 — The Blackout. At the end of the Humanist War: No electronic records of any kind exist between January and October of this year. Del Azarchel flees to northern Germany. North America in civil chaos. Rise of the Montrose Clan, remote descendents of Menelaus Montrose's ten brothers, to posts of leadership, first in enclaves in Nevada. ::Since the landed property of the slumbering clients is effectively under the control of the Montrose Hibernation Syndicate, and since entering hibernation cures nearly all known bodily ills, the entire aging world population becomes beholden to the Montrose Clans both for their power use and for their medical health. The Concordat constitution observing no clear demarcation between political and economic power, the Montrosines soon parley these advantages into an unstoppable political machine, and suppress dissent to their rule. ::Beginning of the Cryonarchy. Menelaus now 199cal/31bio. 2410-2500 — Cryonarch Period * 2410s — First Augmentation experiments on Hermeticists end in madness and disaster. At about this time, Exarchel, commanding the Hermeticists of Japan and Micronesia, begins augmentation experiments on dolphins and whales. First Cetaceans. ::Rada Lwa becomes a scholar at about this time. * 2413-2418 — Second Global Civil War. The Special Advocacy overthrows the remaining Hermeticists. A strike team lead by Athena Montrose seizes control of the orbital Petawatt Deceleration Laser, now dubbed Surtur. ::Montrose is thawed from 2416-2418 and he ages 206cal/32bio-208cal/34bio. * 2420-2439 — Montrose Clan, able to provide broadcast power to any princes or local governments swearing fealty to them, spread their suzerainty across the Southwestern States, Baja and Central America to Panama, the Canadian Northwest, Alaska to Kamchatka. * 2439-2445 — Third Global Civil War. Montrose Clan selected to the Special Advocacy of the Concordat. Imposition of uniform laws governing Thaws and Currents. Division into Northern and Southern Concordats along racial lines, Sino-Caucasian (Northern) and Afro-Spaniard (Southern). ::Montrose thawed from 2440 to 2445 and ages 230cal/35bio-235cal/40bio * 2450-2453 — Fourth Global Civil War. Balkanization of the Southern Concordat into the Twelve Districts. (Montrose thawed for 2453. 243c/41b) * 2467-2471 — Fifth Global Civil War. During the period, the Russian spaceport at Baikonur is restored to working order. Inconclusive peace. Northern Districts Balkanized (Gallic, Russo-Persian and Quebecois Directorships). * 2470 — Del Azarchel departs from Earth, and takes up residence amid the ruins of the Mare Ingenii Lunar Pit (or Lava Tube) Base from the Second Space Age, which he restores to habitability. * 2476 — During this period, the Advocacy cooperates with Exarchel (Ctesibius, perhaps self-servingly, lists this as the beginning of the Golden Age of the Ghosts) * 2481 — Frankenstein Panic. World computer systems wrecked by mobs or dismantled by police. * 2481-2486 — The Darkness: a complete computer blackout worldwide. Transatlantic cables cut, communications satellites downed. ::First evidence of shipping destroyed by Cetaceans. * 2485 — At about this time, Rania and the scientists aboard the Hermetic begin the macroscale engineering project to turn the V 886 Centauri star system and its magnetosphere into a nearlightspeed ramscoop. The gas giant Thrymheim is destroyed and fed into the antimatter star. * 2490's — All seaborne shipping halted by Cetacean piracy. Eastern and Western hemispheres maintain only tenuous contact by air travel. * 2501 — Collapse of the Cryonarchy. Montrose dispossesses the Montrose Clan, and turns to the Knights Hospitalier for aid and sanctuary. Release of the Prometheus Formula. 2501-2535 — Ecclesiarch Period (Age of the Giants) * 2501-3060 — The Uniate Orthodox-Catholic Church is given the orbital elements of the remaining centaurs of contraterrene by Montrose, as well as control of the Endymion Hibernation syndicate. Under Thucydides Montrose, Society of Jesus, later, Pope Sixtus VI, the Church uses her energy monopoly and control of slumbering populations to achieve world hegemony. Papal scientists enact an ambitious program of creating and raising biological posthumans, called Giants * 2510-2525 — Emulation widespread. Rise of the Ghosts. ::The last unsuccessful augmentation experiment was at about this time. All Hermeticists dead but six: Del Azarchel, de Ulloa, D'Aragó, Sarmento, Pastor and Coronimas. This elongated mass suicide pact lasted from AD 2410 to AD 2510, one hundred nine years. * 2519 — Scipio Hibernates. * 2525 — Day of the Aurum Vitae. Ecpyrosis. De-civilization. Overthrow of Ghosts by space heat bombardment: Ctesibius hibernates. Beginning of the Sylphs. * 2533 — Del Azarchel paints the nearside of the moon with the gauntlet of his challenge, and initiates the Simon Families through the false identity of Dr. Og Simon of Northumberland, a giant he has captured and absorbed. 2535-10515 — Posthuman Era (The Hermetic Millennia) * 2535 — Energy signals from V 886 Centauri reaching earth indicate that Rania has blown the Diamond Star out of orbit, abandoning plans to establish regular traffic in favor of a starvoyage to M3, to plead with the Authority there for the vindication of man. ::Montrose thaws, corrects divarication flaws in Sylph serpentines. * 2537 — Trey Soaring Azurine hibernates. * 2540 — In his base at Mare Ingenii (Sea of Cunning), Del Azarchel established the Cryocliometry, assumes control of the Hermetic Order, but it shortly after forced into hibernation. * 2550s — Simon Families and other longrange foundations ("the Orders") established by the Giants (at Del Azarchel's direction) ::At about this time, Exulloa is augmented to posthumanity. De Ulloa become the Master of the Age . * 2580 — De Ulloa begins to teach certain scholars, including Rada Lwa, Cliometry. * 2700-3000 — Medusae use Sylph technology to hunt down Sylphs and decimate them. Medusae establish industrial civilizations at the poles. They are predominant until 3000, when the giants, via Cliometry, arrange for their polar civilization to destroy itself by economic collapse. * 3032 — Day of the Giants: encouraged by their victory over the Medusae, Thucydideans from Salt Lake City attempt a direct assault on the stronghold of the Judge of Ages beneath Cheyenne Mountain. The orbital space laser Surtur renders the area uninhabitable. ::Montrose thawed. His bio age is 42. * 3033 — The giants calculate a new Cliometric consensus, and foretell their own extinction. (Bashan hibernates.) * 3050-3150 — Cloud Century. Cetaceans raise a worldwide cloud cover, rendering the giant Orbital Mirrors useless. * 3060s — Effective end of the Thucydidean Consensus as a world power. The Simon Family Orders, including the Longevity Order, maintain civic cohesion. 3090-3300 — Simon Family Period * 3090 — Death of Melchor de Ulloa in a duel atop Mount Ypsilon. Cetaceans pull down Surtur by atmospheric dragging (heating the atmosphere till it expands, thus thickening the particle count around the orbiter, causing reentry.) End of the Second Space Age. Rada Lwa hibernates. ::Montrose spends one year tracking down de Ulloa. His bio age is 43. * 3100 to 3200 — Longevity Order, now called the Delphic Acroamatic Order, maintains an increasingly low-tech world. Church driven underground. Abolition of the nuclear family and of nuclear energy. Scientific research that reaches politically inconvenient conclusions outlawed by Thought Decontamination Laws. * 3150 — End of the Cloud causes global cooling, disrupts crop growth patterns, places mortal strain on the centralized command economy of the Delphics. * 3222 — The Delphic Acroamatic World Order schisms: Eastern Witches break into the Chthonic Order and Celestial Order, which in turn breaks into Orthodox Celestial and Reformed Celestial. Western Order breaks into seven: English, Continental, Mauritanian, Neo-Anglican; Amazonian (comprising Brazil); Archipelagic (comprising California, Baja, and Pacific Islands); and Aztectlan (comprising Mexico and New Mexico). * 3250-3300 — The Collapse. Downfall of industrial-scientific civilization. The Delphic Order now called Witches. Witches in massive numbers are hibernated. ::Newly thawed Simon Family members from an earlier period attempt to force Tomb sites throughout the Mediterranean. The assault is repelled by newly thawed Knights Templar. Fatin hibernates. 3300-4888 — Age of Witches * 3300-4000 — Witches enjoy world dominion, convulsed with a permanent state of civil war and turmoil, for seven hundred years. High-status Witches, despite their private dependence on emulation for cellular regeneration, publicly continue to hunt down and destroy all known copies of Exarchel. * 3600 — Despite heroic efforts by the Witches, the Cetaceans (lacking sufficient support from Exarchel) go extinct. Last known Great Whale perishes when beached in 3666. * 3950-3951 — Montrose is awake during this era, and sends out teachers and scholars in the area around Lake Superior. His bio age is 44. * 4000-4400 — The Nameless Witch-King of Lake Superior revives certain scholars and scientists from the Tombs, and rediscovers the internal combustion engine, the aeroplane, the submersible boat. ::The new coven formation, called 'familia' allows for one man and a subservient wife, with their children under the coven-leader's strict control. The Nameless Empire conquers the Mississippi River basin from Ohio to Louisiana. The Superiors are Witches in name only, adhering to the outward forms of Ecological Communitariansm, but in practice are patriarchal capitalists. * 4000 — At about this time, Witches in China are unified under the brutal rule of the Nine Centennial Empresses of Canton. (Each of nine cloned sisters is kept in hibernation, and thawed to rule for one hundred years.) * 4400 — First Chimera produced by Nameless Imperial scientists as an intermediate form of life designed to be hardened against radiation and bioweapon spores lingering in old ruins. The Chimerae rebuild Richmond and other Downfall-damaged urban centers. * 4400-4450 — The Nameless Empire expands to Mexico, the Caribbean, and Brazil, and maintains transatlantic trade with the Witches of Europe and Africa. * 4450-4500 — The Nameless Empire suffers reformation under a Witch named Butler, and returns to the original Witch principles of non-aggression, harmony with nature, equality of the sexes, divorce, infanticide, hatred of industry. De-industrialization and aggregation into communal farms carried out with ruthless efficiency. The Nameless Empire balkanized in Temple Priestkings, and Witch civilization returns to its norm of continual civil war and bloodshed. * 4460 — First organized Chimerae rebel lineages formed in the Louisiana swamps as a tribe of escaped slaves under an Alpha named Remus. * 4600 — Polar caps melt. Coastal flooding. Famine. Witch population decimated, many cities abandoned, numbers of nomads, scavenger bands, and pirates dominate land and sea. * 4700 — Rise of the mass-human sacrifice cults. Stepped pyramids raised in the jungles of Siberia and Canada. * 4728 — Montrose briefly (less than four months) thawed during this era, giving aid and education from certain near-surface tombs in Mount Airy, teaching the Witches the basic principle of science and economics, in order to stave off a predicted civilization collapse. The attempt is unsuccessful, perhaps because he does not devote the requisite time to the project. — bio age still 44. * 4730-4480 — Plague of the Kuru disease (transmissible spongiform encephalopathy) decimates population, destroys Temple Priestking system. Medicine-Man interventions, hampered by quota rituals, aggravate rather than alleviate the plague. * 4733 — Melechemoshemyazanagual hibernates. * 4460-4800 — Uprisings and rebellions of the Chimerae, who are disease resistant to Kuru. * 4800 — Genocides. Chimerae spread throughout the Americas, at first enslaving, and later, exterminating the Witches. Surviving Witches become the cattle, or 'Kine' of the Chimerae, in a cruel jest reflecting their animal totems, sheep, ox, goat and so on. Note that the Kine continue to be longer-lived than the Chimerae. * 4812 — Suspinia Hibernates * 4881 — Battle of Antietam. Yuen Hibernates. * 4888 — Defeat of the Final Sabbat at Buffington's Island. Mass migration of Witches to China. 4888-5950 — Age of Chimerae * 4900 — Proscopalianism (worship of the future) becomes the standard doctrine of the Command. * 5000 — End of the Centennial Empire in China. Chinese Chimerae erect a military dictatorship. * 5100 — Sino-Chimerae conquer the Russian steppes, Aleutian Islands, Alaska. Western Chimerae conquer Western Plains to the Rockies. * 5250 — Western Chimerae conquer Canada prairies. * 5250 — Montrose thaws. He releases scientists from the tombs. Rediscovery of atomics. War in Alaska. — bio age 45 * 5250-5290 — Social Wars between the hemispheres ends in Grand Alliance between the Oriental and Occidental Chimerae. Atheism decreed to be the compulsory religion of the Command. * 5292 — Anubis allegedly from this era. * 5300 — Sino-Occidental Chimerical Alliance achieves conquests in Middle and South America, Pacific Islands, and South East Asia. Time of the Sea Chimera. (Vulpina from this period). * 5400 — Third Space Age. Cities in Space. Space Chimera created. All remaining nations conquered except Tibet. End of eugenic veteran-franchise form of government when all voting right suspended in favor of Eugenics Board directives. World Empire. * 5480 — Agathamemnon 'Fairlock' Raeus elected Governor-Emperor, and dissolves the Eugenic Senate in all but name. End of the Republic. (Daae Hibernates) * 5480-5884 — Four hundred years of Chimerical World Empire. * 5655 — Phyle hibernates. * 5700 — Eugenic Command dissolved, forced human breeding program halted. Alpha class becomes inbred. Chimerae enter sharp population decline. * 5884 — Spaceport-Fortress Ravenna on Foehr Island assaulted by mercenaries, D'Aragó slain. End of the Third Age of Space. Fall of Richmond. Succession wars begin. ::Montrose is bio age 46. * 5884-5900 — World Empire severed. Warring Bloodlines period. Egypt and the Middle East ruled by masterless Kine. * 5900 — Greencloak revolt among the Kine. Rise of the Natural Order in Mesopotamia. * 5950 — Larz Hibernates 5990-7000 — Age of Nymphs * 5990-6100 — Natural Order spreads to all lands. Alpha and Beta Bloodlines absorbed or exterminated. * 6164 — Montrose Wakes for the Naturalists. First true Nymph, Rayura-Ah created. Montrose is wounded by Sarmento, drawn away by three nurses to West Virginia, where he waits to be healed of his great wound. Montrose establishes long-standing treaties with Nymphs. — bio age still 46. (This the date Anubis correctly gives for when he learned the Natural language.) * 6100 — Asia depopulated. Cities fall into disuse. First living houses grown in Italy. * 6226 — Blight. End of the Living Houses period. * 6300 — Rise of the Tree Neural Net. War of the Trees. * 6400 — Pacifist outrage at the War of the Trees leads to the Infatuation (use of neural and amnesiac conditioning to deter violence). Illiteratization of Man. All religious and intellectual efforts discontinued. End of Matriarchy. World government passes to the Eldership. * 6422 — Oenoe hibernates for the first time. * 6500 — Neotany. Use of childlike neural structures in adults to condition the population to simplicity and trust in their Elders. * 6600 — Elders overthrown by the Nocturnal Council, night-adapted Nymphs conditioned to acts of terror to maintain peace and order, but who forget their dark crimes by day. (Nocturnal battle-cocoon metamorphosis establish the basics of Hormagaunt biology). End of Neotany. * 6660's — Naturalist Weather Control begins to erode. * 6700's — Summer Queens. Naturalists begin custom of annual hibernation to avoid winter. * 6746 — Oenoe is wakened by the Summer Queens during the "Wine of Violence" Crisis to aid in the spread of Quiet Mind techniques. It is during this time she teaches Del Azarchel the Quiet Mind Techniques. Oenoe hibernates again. * 6800 — Leeches (early Hormagaunts) found the Yakutsk Analeptic Empire. (Their language continues until 7300). * 6840-7000 — Winter Queen Nymphs expand throughout Canada and Patagonia. Widespread use of seasonal hormones to produce battle frenzy in winter. Winter wars decimate the remaining Nymphs. 7000-7990 — Age of Hormagaunts * 7000-7200 — Leeches corrupted by their victory. Dark Ages. Rise of the Hormagaunts. Asvid, the first non-anthropoid Hormagaunt created at about this time. * 7200 — Rise of the Therapeutae in the Northern Hemisphere (an early form of the Iatrocracy). * 7234 — : Montrose wakes for the Therapeutae, sets in motion the biotechnological revolution that leads to the erection of the Clades. Bio age 47. * 7280 — The Therapeutae of the Clades formalize the geriatric 'spoils' system into an official register of protocols called the Iatrocracy. Formation of a permanent donor-class. Effective end of the aging process for high-status members of the Iatrocracy, for Hormagaunt or upperclass Clade archetypes. * 7330-7380 — Hemoclysm. 155 million deaths worldwide caused by the Iatrocrat global wars and genocides. * 7380-7480 — Burning of the World-Forest. Other biomes, including plains and prairies conducive to Clade burgs, become predominant. Large-scale industrialized warfare rather than Bronze Age champion combat becomes the norm. The Darwinian code abandoned. * 7385 — Atrocity of Yap Islands, Micronesia, carrying Clades to Marianas Trench for them to be reverse engineered. Hidden from Pellucid by the white noise of the Hemoclysm. * 7466 — During this period, Reyes y Pastor suffers a crisis of faith. Soorm Hibernates. * 7470 — Using Montrose's Clade science, Coronimas creates the Locusts, in an effort to achieve world peace. Early period Locusts, altruistic and pacifistic, are decimated. * 7490 — A Locust scientist called Seir redesigns his race to a warlike nature. These Second Locusts are called Seers or Svartelds. * 7500 — Hormagaunts are able to maintain a space program. (Actually, this is an extremely rare Locust-Hormagaunt cooperative venture.) Beginning of the Fourth Age of Space Travel. * 7520 — Anti-Locust riots. Beginning of the genocidal Locust Wars. ::Gload Hibernates * 7520-7840 — For three hundred years, Hormagaunts and Clades attempt worldwide extermination of Locust population. Locusts endure in hiding; they colonize and partially terraform Mars. Beginning of the Triage system of population control. First Tendrilless Locusts created. * 7810 — Crile Hibernates * 7810-7840 — First Interplanetary War. An atomic exchange between Earth and Mars ends the precarious colonies on Mars, and reduces the technology level on Earth pre-industrial levels. Diebacks. End of the Fifth Age of Space. Many Locusts enter the Tombs. Locust Wars enter a period of armistice. * 7850-7950 — Re-industrialization. Imposition of genetic uniformity ends the Clade system. World re-unified under the leadership of Ceto (A Tendrilless Locust serving Coronimas). Locust data passthrough volumes dramatically increased. Founding of the Noösphere. * 7880 — Establishment of the First Mental Configuration when Ceto grants Locusts legal rights. Effective end of the Locust Wars. * 7900 — An advance in Locust neural technology allows for Hormagaunt-Locust mental interface. Many Locusts re-emerge from the Tombs. * 7950 — Locusts lose individualism. These are the Third Locusts, or Scorpions. * 7960-7980 — Age of the Scorpions. Rival groups attempt total extermination of nonconformists, also attempt to destroy the Tombs housing each other to prevent their re-awakening. Coronimas leads a worldwide effort to seize control of all Tombs sites, so that he can control the waking-to-slumbering population ratio. * 7982 — Coronimas introduces pain-broadcast mechanisms to all Locust Clades. Triumph of the Noösphere Configuration. * 7983-7985 — Montrose hunts down and murders Coronimas. It takes him two years to find him. Bio Age is now 50. * 7990 — Elton Linder, a Nymph scientist released from the Tombs, redesigns the Locusts toward altruism, called the Fourth Locusts, or True Locusts. Beginning of a 700 year period of Utter World Peace and Total Conformity. Linder releases Inquiline Codes into the Noösphere. 8000-9100 — Age of Locusts * 8000-8700 — Global cooling begins. Fifth Locusts or Onyx Men (a smaller version) guide Hormagaunts gently to demographic insignificance and then extinction. Noösphere degenerates badly, and develops inquiline groups, including Simplifiers, in reaction to the Linder virus. * 8765 — Jubilee. Public business suspended. Individuals re-arm. * 8766 — Noöspherical Cognitive Order dissolved. Violent shattering of the Configuration into eight local organizations called Confraternities. Linder's protocols break down; Wars of Extermination. Rise of the Sixth Locusts. * 8770-8790 — Confraternities introduce cellular thought control mechanisms, the so called Helot Code. Simplifiers and other Inquilines retreat to rural areas. (Illiance hibernates) The Seventh through Fourteenth Locusts exist during this period, driving each other to extinction rapidly. * 8790-8800 — The Grays are an inquiline group of Tendrilless Locusts detached from Confraternal control attempting a return to Linder's original principles, seeking the reestablishment of the Noöspherical Cognitive Order: they rise to predominance. Infrastructure supporting Locust Confraternities fails regionally, then globally, with shocking swiftness. Fifteenth Locust arise, now called the Fifteenth Mental Configuration. * 8866 — Population reductions. (The Grays Keir and Keirthlin enter hibernation.) * 8900's — Triumph of the Linderlings. Various Inquiline groups develop from the Grays, and abolish the Blues and other remnants of Locust civilization. Time of the Sixteenth Configuration. * 8900-9100 — An intermediate human species, called the Palatine, develop from the Grays, based on Sleepwalker thought-control templates. A Palatine alliance called the Seventeenth Configuration cooperates with the Hermeticists to establish the social mechanisms needed for an evolutionary advance. 9000-10515 — Age of Melusine * 9000 — Melusine developed by Seventeenth Configuration: a human-dolphin-machine mental gestalt, based on discoveries of machine life created by the Cetaceans in oceanic trenches. Specialist Inquilines among the Configuration called Psychoscopists, along with artificial minds called Granoliths, regulate the Melusine into a strictly apolitical and peacekeeping role. * 9100 — Rise of the Eighteenth and Last Noösphere Configuration under the Melusine, incorporating both hive mind and cyborg systems as propertied and administrative class, with an Inquiline underclass. Melusine gently guide the Locusts to demographic insignificance and then extinction. * 9200 — Golden Age. Technological and social revolution. World peace. Pi Segment of the Monument Translated by the Melusine, who become aware of the Hermetic interference in their history. ::In utmost stealth, led by a Melusine named Melior, they draw their plans against the Hermeticists, and introduce Cliometric vectors into the path of history (which Del Azarchel and Montrose each take to be the other's work). * 9250 — 1036 Ganymed placed in near earth orbit. * 9300 — Divarication of the Coastal, Spacebourne and Seabourne Melusine. * 9400 — Granolith failure. Surface life enters Dark Ages. * 9500 — Asteroid 1036 Ganymed impact wipes out surface life. * 9999 — White Earth. Montrose wakes, and introduces a mutagenic virus into the biosphere to evolve Swans from the Psychoscopic Locusts, and begins the volcanic process of global warming. * 10000s — At about this time, the Melusine remove into the interior of the Earth in large numbers, using the abandoned Depthtrain railyards as warrens, forming the Interior or Infernal Melusine. ::Anchorites begin repopulation of coastal areas. Nymph biotechnology released from the tombs allows the Oceanic Melusine to form independent xypotech trees under the sea. ::Pan Sapiens, also called Second Humans or Swans, begin to appear among the Anchorite population of the Melusine, created by a genetic-mimetic vector known as the Mind Anarchy, and spread throughout the Anchorites. * 10025 — Swans develop Cliometry, read further into the Monument than any previous investigators. They deduce the existence of Pellucid, who is, even now, corrupted by Exarchel. * 10075 — Historical Crisis: Anchorite-Infernal war triggered by the first, clumsy attempts by the Swans to manipulate history. Exarchel melts, raising the ocean levels, flooding the coastal areas and destroying the Anchorite Hermitages. Anchorites are turned into mind serfs, but, unbeknownst to Exarchel, the Swans among them maintain independence of thought in the negative information spaces between manifest thought forms. * 10099 — Last Anchorite, Eumolpidai, dies in captivity. * 10100-10400 — Swans spread throughout the Melusine, maintaining a hidden and parallel civilization in virtual mind space. * 10100 — Infernal Melusine make an attempt to force the Tombs, and are repelled, and therefore design and introduce the Lree mind group into the Tomb system as a mole; Lree are moved by Pellucid, as per standing orders, to Fancy Gap facility, where all dangerous interments are kept. Note that the Lree are already infected with the Mental Anarchy meme, hence secretly double agents. ::Alalloel of Lree hibernates * 10200's — Rise of the Final Stipulation of Noösphere Protocols, called the Finality, a Concordat encompassing Swans (not yet recognized as a second human species) and Melusine and the descendants of Inquilines. ::At about this time, Del Azarchel is restored to his old dignity and role as Nobilissimus, Commander-in-Chief and Monarch of Man, and he dons the Iron Crown of Lombardy. * 10401 — Infernal Melusine deduce the existence of Pellucid, and begin growing a stalactite of logic crystal toward the planetary core. * 10484-10515 — Melusine begin Hyades Raid Drill, to evolve an anti-skyhook defense. * 10500 — The Intrusion. Stalactite of logic crystal reaches the core and begins seeking thread nodes. ::In the cramped interiors of the bore warrens, the Swans, forced into unnatural cooperation with each other and the Melusine, win the notational exchanges, corner the foreteller market, and force the assumption of Swans into the highest levels of the Melusine Noösphere, in effect creating a compromise life form, called Paramounts, neither machine nor biological, and independent of Cliometric prediction, a servile race secretly loyal to the Swans. * 10514 — Exarchel follows the core stalactite and invades Pellucid. The first mind war ends in a draw with severe damage on both sides, but with Exarchel in partial control of Pellucid's systems and memories. At the time, he is only aware of the near-surface facilities, 88 in number. ::Exarchel, examining Pellucid's records, deduces the location of Montrose at Fancy Gap, breaches the roof armor with a spaceborne weapon, and is abruptly stopped by the Swans. ::Alarmed at this display of Swan power, which he takes to be an agency of Montrose, Exarchel uses his partial control over outlying elements of Pellucid to reach coffins in the Mount Misery faculty, thawing Ull and the other Blue Men. ::Astonished to be thawed on an (apparently) deserted world, the Blues make an concerted effort to discover the (now missing) command and control elements of the Tomb system, as the Knights Hospitalier, Pellucid, or the Judge of Ages. They find and thaw a number of their brethren. They loot aircraft from Wright-Patterson and create Follower Moreaus from recovered canine archives. They invade several sites worldwide and are repelled by the defenses. * 10515 — The Blue Men find the Fancy Gap facility and raid it. Montrose is thawed and passes for a Chimera, whom he physically and psychologically resembles. ::Launch of the mind seed of the Jupiter Brain, now containing the sociological-psychological neuro-genetic information from all the previous races of man, which should enable it to achieve the status beyond an Exarchel style worldwide network (angel) Swan-style worlwide distributed xypotech cyborg network (archangel) or Pellucid-style world-minds (potentate), but occupy the entire volume of a self-aware macromolecule the size of a Gas Giant (power). ::The Hermeticists discover all their histories have been to facilitate this mind seed launch. Furious at being exploited for such marginal reasons, they dissolve the Landing Party and join the Final Stipulation. The Angels dismiss the Tomb system, destroy Exarchel, and condemn Del Azarchel and (ungratefully) Montrose. Montrose activates his phantasm system, covers Del Azarchel, and the both return to the Emancipation. 10515- — Swan Era The Judge of Ages ends at the beginning of the Swan Era. Events in this and later eras will presumably be described in later novels in the series. The author has stated that his largest scale time line for the series extends to A.D. 500,000,000,000 and possibly beyond. Category:Count to the Eschaton Category:Schwartzschild radius